Ah ok so the three years that will bring you up to 30 years are not actually paid yet but once you pay them the forcast is 170 in that case I think you are working towards the 35 NI years rule so it might be that if you pay the three earlier missing years then you would get 33 out of 35 which I think would get you close to the full pension but maybe a little shy of the actual full value. I get that there is a 15 quid difference roughly between the 154 and the 170 and that you would think that another three years contributions should ahve the same effect of adding about 15 quid to it, back before 2016 we all only needed 30 years contributions and then the changed it again to 35, because I have 43 years I don't know the impact on people our age of not having 35 years, I don't know if it's using 30 years or 35 years as part of the projection but I think it would make sense that getting closer to the 35 years might increase your entitlement. I checked and this 35 year thing is really strictly for youngsters starting work after 2016 for us we are in a hybrid environment which is why I don't really know because my own forecast has missing years that are too old for me to do anything about but even if I could I can't get more then the new State Pension. My COPE amount paid from my other pensions will amount t0 £24.24 which is less than I would have got from the government through SERPS and S2P if I had never contracted out. It might be that all you should really pay is the older three years rather than the more recent three years to get to 30 years.
In retrospect, I think mine is quite simple to understand because I stopped paying NI a long long time ago and only started again in 2021 ... It then went pear shaped because the bank blocked the DD for my Voluntary Class 3 - hence the partial year with £200.20 unpaid. Anyway, prior to 2016 I had 27/30 qualifying years. So my starting amount is the £154.20 they have quoted me. Transitional rules allow me to pay additional years and those I do will add £5.29/week (at current rate) to my pension Hence I Pay 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25 then I will increase my pension by 3 x £5.29/week to £170.07 as per above. If I pay a further 3 years - the older ones in 2025 (before or when I claim) then I assume I can bump it up to the full amount £185.15 - whether it's actually worth doing that later we shall see
Yes seeing your actual forecast from the gov website that's exactly what it is saying, they are explicitly saying that the most you can get is the full new state pension and given you only have those three years not complete that will bring you up to full pension if you pay the 1820.
This is one of the simpler pages in my financial model that I've been maintaining for years, I'm predicting a 6% uplift for April 2024 at the moment and asssuming we return to normal inflation for the rest of time. I can mark that cell in yellow now and label it TL (triple lock) SKIPPED was last year when they broke the lock It's a crap spreadsheet the uplift value is on the prior row but I know what I mean when I read it, I've got predictions for later than age 80 but I seriously doubt I will be around by then, I'm expecting to have spent almost all of my personal pension savings by then and to be relying on State Pension for my 80's if I last that long.
They've just extended the deadline :- State pension: Deadline extended for National Insurance top-ups - BBC News
Keep all printouts and PDF printouts of every forecast and your NI record, my gut tells me there are ambiguities in the published literature and the interpretations on websites and in news articles like that BBC one above, they state "Initially, people had until 5 April to make voluntary adjustments for gaps between 2006 and 2016", that's just strange, they also state "In general, people need 35 years of qualifying contributions to get the full state pension" but that's not taking into account the transitional rules, articles like this just sow doubt
Yes, given how close we are to AI etc. you'd think they could come up with a simple online tool to indicate whether paying for additional years would benefit a future claimant or not.
I paid the partial year I had and 1 other year and now it looks like this: Previously I had 27 qualifying years. Now I have 29 qualifying years and 2 years in which to pay the 30th year. I think £193.07 will be it for me, short by £10.78 because I contracted out at sometime.
The triple lock was supposed to apply to the state pension only, but for some reason this year it was applied to my civil service and RAF pensions. I didn't get the whole 10·1%, something to do with opting out (?), but my RAF pension went up by 7·9%, and the civil service one by 7·4%. Most welcome as those pensions had risen by 0% in several of the last sixteen years!
Should be 8.5% from April 2024. This years increase has already been applied. https://www.ftadviser.com/pensions/2023/11/22/state-pension-to-rise-8-5-as-triple-lock-confirmed/
